Quotes About Imagination

Imagination is a place where all the important answers live.

I thanked him and he asked me if my cape got caught on stuff when I was running and jumping, and I said, Sometimes.

Poetry is like a beef bouillon cube; it's hardly ever needed (or perhaps never needed at all); it sits in its precious wrapper, well out of view, until everyone has forgotten it's there.

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Without inspiration the best powers of the mind remain dormant. There is a fuel in us which needs to be ignited with sparks.

But she had to go to bed first, and all night she slept soundly on her bed of hay, dreaming of nothing but of shining mountains with red roses all over them, among which happy little Snowflake went leaping in and out.

Heidi, it's just as if we were in a high carriage and were going to drive straight into heaven.

Allí arriba tiene su nido? ¡Qué bonito debe de ser vivir tan alto!

In the corner near her grandfather's bed she saw a short ladder against the wall; up she climbed and found herself in the hayloft. There lay a large heap of fresh sweet-smelling hay, while through a round window in the wall she could see right down the valley.

When ships to sail the void between the stars have been built, there will step forth men to sail these ships.

We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens... The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking for fresh nourishment.

We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.

Why have I not genius to start some new thought? Some thing that will surprise the world?

What a fine affair it would be if we could flit across the Atlantic as they say the angels do from planet to planet.

Imagination paints a charming view of the future, conveniently adapted to the demands of our current emotion.

Imagination need not stand as an obstacle to clear-sighted perception; on the contrary, it can be a prerequisite for recognition of the less obvious aspects of what is really there.

Just when I thought there wasn't room enough for another thought in my head, I had this great idea—

The room I entered was a dream of this room. Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine. The oval portrait of a dog was me at an early age. Something shimmers, something is hushed up. We had macaroni for lunch every day except Sunday, when a small quail was induced to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things? You are not even here.

Memory is imagination, and imagination is memory. I don't think we remember the past, we imagine it. We take a few props with us into the future, and out of those props we make a model, some stage set, and that's our version of the past. Of course models decay, and they change. And so we're constantly reshaping the past. Because the past is us. The past is our foundation.

It seems to me a work of art is the evidence offered by a fantastically observant witness

The secret of survival is a defective imagination. The inability of mortals to imagine things as they truly are is what allows them to live, since one momentary, unresisted glimpse of the world's totality of suffering would annihilate them on the spot, like a whiff of the most lethal sewer gas.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

Still the dream persists, suppressed but always there, that somehow by some miraculous effort of the heart what was done could be undone. What form would such atonement take that would turn back time and bring the dead to life? None. None possible, not in the real world. And yet in my imaginings I can clearly see this cleansed new creature steaming up out of myself like a proselyte rising drenched from the baptismal river amid glad cries.

I marvelled, not for the first time, at the cruel complacency of ordinary things. But no, not cruel, not complacent, only indifferent, as how could they be otherwise? Henceforth, I would have to address things as they are, not as I imagine them, for this was a new version of reality.